The Harder It Is To Believe In It All

I'd got used to accepting some very, very traditional points of view on Catholicism, and that was all turned upside down. There was a time after I'd been studying theology for about a year, that I was really scared that it was going to ruin my soul, and I was going to lose my faith completely. And I did struggle with my faith for a while. I found the more you know about the Christian history and the way the scriptures were put together and things, the more questions you've got, and the harder it is to believe in it all.

A former nun explains why she ran away from her 'Cloistered' life

MARCH 20, 2024 Fresh Air with Terri Gross

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In Christian theology, sin needed to be judged by a just God; there needed to be an atonement, a concept that Christians share with Jews. But the way Christians believe it played out is that Jesus—“the Lamb of God who was slain”—took on himself the sins of the world so that others may live.

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I have taken comfort during my own times of grief and pain in believing that God can empathize with my experience. It’s reassuring to believe that heartbreak and suffering, even tears, aren’t alien concepts to Jesus. This doeshat is shattered; it doesn’t reclaim what is lost. But it does make the loss more tolerable. I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps it’s a sense of feeling known, a kind of solidarity in suffering.

That, of course, doesn’t answer why an all-good and all-powerful God would allow suffering to exist rather than eradicate it. Christianity doesn’t provide an explanation; what it does is place pain into a larger narrative, one in which the crucifixion of Jesus gives way to his resurrection. Death gives way to life. Fractured lives are repaired. Restorative justice happens.

THE GREATEST CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY

Good Friday reminds us of the ephemerality of human power.

By Peter Wehner